Arrival at Green Gulch, Week 1

Sunday, 11 April 2010
Its raining. There's been talk of it all week: its going to rain on Sunday. There is more talk than usual, even, about the weather here, because our work changes depending on the weather. We were set to plant two of the large fields this week, but if it rains today, we won't be able to. The soil will be too wet.

Back up. I arrived at Green Gulch Farm/Green Dragon Zen Temple, last Wednesday. It was a smooth but bittersweet arrival: i arrived to gorgeous sun, stopped at Stinson Beach along the way, and visited friends on the drive down. But, i had just left behind my whole life and friends and contact with the world-as-i-know-it, in a flash. Just like that, i stepped out of my life and into a dorm room. Lucky for me, this is a very welcoming place, and it was sunny and warm for three days in a row - enough for me to really soak it in, get a sunburn, and go swim in the reservoir and ocean. Also, i'm not alone. There are 9 of us apprentices, who all arrived the same day, in more or less similar situations (having left behind large and small pieces of our lives). We are artists, scientists, farmers, knitters, bakers, communications specialists, and many other things - but we share this common intention: to come here and work with the land to produce food, while studying Zen Buddhism. It is good.

After my arrival on Wednesday, we had a couple of days of orientation with our Farm Manager and Garden Manager. They told us about the history of Green Gulch Farm. We cleared "weeds" out of the pond (i'm told the main undesirables are parrot feather and Brazilian pondweed). Our able guides took us to roam in the hills, climbing up to Hope Cottage for a series of good vantage points for the farm, the valley, and Muir Beach. We botanized (!), identified poison oak, learned about the San Andreas fault, and discussed more history of the farm and its surrounds. This farm was originally a cattle and dairy farm (as were many of the farms in this region - Strauss is just up the coast from us). The land was basically donated to the Zen Center in the late 1970s, when gardener and farmer Alan Chadwick (who also implemented UC Santa Cruz's farm) helped instate the farm as it is. Wendy Johnson and others shepherded the farm into what it has become today - 5 acres in the bottom of the valley. 4 acres are farmed for vegetables, 1 acre is the garden with herbs, ornamentals, orchards and berries among other things.

On Friday afternoon, we had a lesson in soil microbe ecology (Jessica - they do value their microbes here - and they teach us to do the same). There are millions of organisms living in ONE TEASPOON of soil. Stunning. And most of those organisms, we (meaning, science) haven't even identified. Of the ones we have identified or named, there are bizillions of bacteria and protozoa, loads of nematodes (nematodes!), arthropods, annelids, gastropods, and fungi or at least fungal hyphae. With this information, we then proceeded to the beds. We planted baby lettuce starts by hand into beds that were tilled by hand. We plant the lettuces in a "hex pattern", which means the plants are staggered a bit in each row, so that the distance between any two plants is a triangular identical distance apart. See photo. Once you set plants (or seeds) in the ground, you must water them in. About 45 min will do it. So we watered our new starts, and celebrated by swimming in the reservoir. These starts will be harvested as baby lettuces, so they can be planted very close together. We plant baby lettuce beds anew, each week, so there is a steady supply of baby lettuce (this is especially desirable for the restaurants that buy from us).



Then we had a half-day sitting, and some zazen (sitting) instruction. There are many forms in each Zen sitting and ritual, and we reviewed some of those - its very helpful to review, since some are different and some are just difficult to remember the order of bowing, getting up, sitting down, etc.

Mostly, i've had the sense of having too much to do, if anything. I have suddenly and unintentionally shifted my sleep schedule, so that i go to bed by about 21:00, because wake up is around 5:00. It was a relief to find out that the center is on "interim schedule", which means that wake up time is actually about an hour later than it will be for most of the summer. I'm glad - this way i can kind of transition more easily into the schedule of rising early and bed early. So far its not terrible, and i'm not tired much.

Back to now: the fields we were to plant have been disc-ed and plowed, but as its been a wet spring so far, its still too wet to plant. Now with the rains, we might have to wait another week or two to plant those big fields, or else we'll compact the soil too much by driving tractors and machinery down the furrows. There is always a plethora of work to do on the farm, though - so we won't be sitting idle watching the soil for signs of drying out. Instead we'll be doing other farm chores like prepping smaller beds, starting new plants, and generally cleaning up. Stay tuned!